THE curse of Tutankhamen is said to have claimed more than 20 lives. By contrast, the curse of Neb-Senu amounts to little more than an occasional inconvenience for museum curators.

Over several days, the ten-inch Egyptian statuette gradually rotates to face the rear of the locked glass cabinet in which it is displayed, and has to be turned around again by hand.

Those who like tales of haunted pyramids and walking mummies may regard the mystery of the 4,000-year-old relic – an offering to Osiris, god of the dead – as the strangest thing to hit Egyptology in decades.

The statuette’s slow about-turn has been captured on film by a time-lapse camera, and curator Campbell Price, 29, says he believes there may be a spiritual explanation.